People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1893 — WARING'S PERIL. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WARING'S PERIL.

By PERIL.

CaM Charkk* kinq. I U.S.ARMY.J

{Copyright, 1893. by J. B. Lippincott . Cm, and published by special arrangement.] Xl— Continued. “I was their guest; I had no money. What could I do? It was then after eleven, I should judge. M. Philippes, or whatever his name was, gave orders to the driver. We pulled up, and then, to my surprise, I found we were at Doyle’s. That ended it. I told them they must excuse me. They protested, but of course I couldn’t go in there. So they took a couple of bottles apiece and went in the gate and I settled myself for a nap and got it. I don’t know how long I slept, but I was aroused by the devil’s own tumult. A shot had been fired. Men and women both were : screaming and swearing. Some one suddenly burst into the cab beside me, really pushed from behind, and then 4iway we went through the mud and rain; and the lightning was flashing now, and presently I could recognize Lascelles, raging. ‘lnfame!’ ‘Coquin!’ ‘Assassin!’ were the mildest terms he was volleying at somebody, and then, ’recognizing me, he burst into maudlin tears, swore I was his only friend. He had been insulted, abused, denied reparation. Was he hurt? I inquired, and instinctively felt for my knife. It was still there where I’d hid it in the inside pocket of my overcoat. No hurt; not a blow. Did I suppose that he, a Frenchman, would pardon that or leave the spot until satisfaction had been exacted? Then I begged him to be calm and listen to me for a moment. I told him my plight —that I had given my word to be at the barracks that evening; that I had no money left, but I could go no further. Instantly he forgot his woes and became absorbed in my affairs. ‘Parole d’honneur!’ he would see that mine was never unsullied. He himself would escort me to the maison de Capitaine Cram. He would rejoice to say to that brave ennemi, Behold! here is thy lieutenant, of honor the most unsullied, of courage the most admirable, of heart the most magnanimous. The Lord only knows w hat he wouldn’t have done had we not pulled up at his gate. There I helped him out on the banquette. He was steadied by his row, whatever it had been. He would not let me expose myself—even under Pierce’s umbrella. He would not permit me to suffer ‘from time® so of the dog.’ ‘You will drive monsieur to his home and return here for me at once,’ he ordered eabby, grasped both my hands with fervent good night and the explanation that he had much haste, implored pardon for leaving me—on the morrow he would call &nd explain everything—then darted Into the gate. We never could have parted on more friendly terms. I stood for a moment to see that he safely reached his door, for a -ight was dimly burning in the hall, then turned to jump into the cab, but it wasn’t there. Nothing was there. I jumped from the banquette into a berth aboard some steamer out at sea. They tell me the first thing I asked for was Pierce’s umbrella and Larkin’s hat.” And this was the story that Waring maintained from first to last. “Pills” ventured a query as to whether the amount of Krug and Clicquot consumed might not have overthrown his mental equipoise. No, Sam declared, he drank very little. “The only Bacchanalian thing I did was to join in a jovial chorus from a new French opera which Lascelles’ friend piped up and I had heard in the north: “Out, buvons, tuvons encore! S’il est un vin qu’on adore De Paris a Mqpao, Cest le Clicquot, e’est le Clicquot.”

Asked if he had formed any conjecture as to the identity of the stranger, Sam said no. The name sounded like “Philippes,” but he couldn't be sure. But when told that there were rumors to the effect that Lascelles’ younger brother had been seen with him twice or thrice of late, and that he had been in exile because, if anything, of a hopeless passion soy madame his sister-in-law, and that his name was Philippe, Waring looked dazed. Then a sudden light, as of uewerf fresher memory, flashed up in his eyes. He seemed about to spe*ik, but as suddenly controlled himself and turned his face to the wall. From that time on he was determinedly dumb about the stranger. What roused him to lively interest and conjecture, however, was Cram’s query as to whether he had not recognized in the cabman called in by the stranger "the very one whom he had “knocked •endwise” and who had tried to shoot him that morning. “No,” said Waring, “the man did not speak at all, that I noticed, and I did not once see his face, he was so bundled up against the •storm.” But if it was the same party, suggested he, it seemed hardly necessary to look any further in explanation of his own disappearance. Cabby had simply squared matters by knocking him senseless, helping himself to his watch and ring and turning out his pockets, then hammering him until frightened off, and then, to cover hia

tracks, setting him afloat in Anatole’s boat. “Perhaps cabby took a hand in the murder, too,” suggested Sam, with eager interest. “You say he had disappeared—gone with his plunder. Now, who else could have taken my knife?” Then Reynolds had something to teU him; that the “lady” who wrote the anonymous letters, the belle amle whom Lascelles proposed to visit, the occupant of the upper floor of “the dove-cot,” was none other than the blighted floweret who had appealed to him for aid and sympathy, for fifty dollars at first and later for more, the first year of his army service in the south, “for the sake of the old home.” Then Waring grew even more excited and interested. “Pills” put a stop to further developments for a few days. He feared a relapse. But, in spite of “Pills,” the developments, like other maladies, throve. The little detective came down again. He was oddly inquisitive about that chanson a boire from “Fleur de The.” Would Mr. Wariaghum it for him? And Sam, now sitting up in his parlor, turned to his piano, and with long, slender, fragile-looking fingers rattled a lively prelude and then faintly quavered the roHicking words. “Odd,” said Mr. Pepper, as they had grown to call him, “I heard that sung by a feHow up in Chartres street two nights hand-running before this thing happened—a merry cuss, too, with a rather loose hand on his shekels. Lots of people may know It, though, mayn’t they?” “No, indeed, not down here,” said Sam. “It only came out in New York within the last four months,and hasn’t been south or west at all, that I know of. What did he look like?” “WeU, what did the feHow that was with you look like?” But here Sam’s description grew vague. So Pepper went up to have a beer by himself at the case chantant

on Chartres street, and didn’t return for nearly a week. Meantime came this exquisite Ap»il morning and Sam’s appearance in thj pony phaeton in front us Battery “X.” Even the horses seemed to prick up their ears and be &la 4 to see him. Grim old war sergeants rode up to touch their caps and the hope that they’d soon have tne lieutenant in command of the right section again “not but what Loot’n’t Ferry’s doing first-rate, sir” —and for a few minutes, as his fair charioteer drove him around the battery, in his weak, languid voice Waring indulged in a little of his owp characteristic chaffing: “I expect you to bring this section up to top notch, Mr. Ferry, as I am constitutionally opposed to any work on my own account. I beg to call your attention, sir, to the fact that it’s very bad form to appear with full dress schabraque on your horse whan the battery is in fatigue. The red blanket, sir, the red blanket only should be used. Be good enough to“stretch your traces there, right caisson. Yes, I thought so, swing trace is twisted. Carelessness, Mr. Ferry, and indifference to duty are things I won’t tolerate. Your cheek strap, too, sir, is an inch too long. Your bit will fall through that horse’s mouth. This won’t do, sir, not in my section, sir. I’ll fine you a box of Partagas if it occurs again.” But the blare of the bugle sounding “attention” announced the presence of the battery commander. Nell whipped up in an instant and whisked her invalid out of the way. “Good morning, Capt. Cram,” said he, as he passed his smiling chief. “I regret to observe, sir, that things have been allowed to run down somewhat in my absence.” “Oh, out with you, you combination of cheek and incapacity, or I’ll run you down with the whole battery. Oh! Waring, some gentlemen in U carriage have just stopped at your quarters, all in black, too. Ah, here’s the orderly now.” And the card, black bordered, handed into the phaeton, bore a name which blanched W’aring’s face:

“WHY, WHAT IS IT, WAKING?”